The US Census Bureau thread

[iheartthed]

Ironically, Highland Park had more high-density housing than Hamtramck. Highland Park had a lot of 4-flat buildings and walkup apartment buildings. But I don't think Hamtramck has much stock above 2-flat houses/bldgs and apartments above storefronts.

[Steely Dan]

^ And yet, at their 1930 peak densities, Hamtramck was considerably denser in terms of average population density.

Hamtramck 1930 density: 26,794 ppsm
Highland Park 1930 density: 17,831 ppsm


Probably lots of large polish immigrant families shoe-horned into all of those 2-flats in Hamtramck at the time.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ And yet, at their 1930 peak densities, Hamtramck was considerably denser in terms of average population density.

Hamtramck 1930 density: 26,794 ppsm
Highland Park 1930 density: 17,831 ppsm


Probably lots of large polish immigrant families shoe-horned into all of those 2-flats in Hamtramck at the time.

Yeah, Highland Park has/had a lot more industrial area than Hamtramck. Hamtramck is mostly residential.

[Steely Dan]

After google mapping my way around highland park for a bit, if there was once an abundance of 4-flats and larger walk-up multi-family apartment buildings, it seems to be almost all gone now.

95%+ of what's left now looks like regular old streetcar suburban tightly packed detached SFH's.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Ironically, Highland Park had more high-density housing than Hamtramck. Highland Park had a lot of 4-flat buildings and walkup apartment buildings. But I don't think Hamtramck has much stock above 2-flat houses/bldgs and apartments above storefronts.

Wow. Absolutely fascinating to see that sort of nice brick 4-flat building right in the middle of urban prairie:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4172...7i16384!8i8192

To think that there's room for four tenant families in there, while other real estate in the same neighborhood is essentially free.

[Crawford]

2021 Highland Park is mostly urban prairie, and the residential stuff that survived tended to be the nicer, more spacious SFHs, so it looks more suburban than it once was.

Here's a surviving example of Highland Park row housing. Nothing like this in Hamtramck:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4142...7i16384!8i8192

Also, Highland Park had lots of upper-middle class apartment buildings built in the interwar period. Many of them were rather grand art deco affairs with doormen. Look at the older Streetviews to see the Moorish-style architecture. Nothing like this in Hamtramck:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/12...9!4d-83.092733

And you see remnants of Highland Park's wealth in the institutional architecture. Grand churches, civic buildings and the like:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4015...7i16384!8i8192

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

2021 Highland Park is mostly urban prairie, and the residential stuff that survived tended to be the nicer, more spacious SFHs, so it looks more suburban than it once was.

That makes sense. Highland park has lost a total of 83% of its peak population, set back in 1930, making it the biggest population loser in history of any US city that has ever crossed the 50K threshold.

But HP and Hamtramck still had a fairly large density gap back in the day, so maybe hamtramck's density was more consistent with a sea of non-stop 2-flats packed to the gills with polish immigrant families, whereas HP's density was more varied with larger scale multi-family in some areas and then more detached SFH in others (by and large the stuff that still remains)?

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

The radical divergence of their two fortunes over the past 3 decade astounds me.

Highland Park historically was completely white and very well off. Hamtramck was always heavily immigrant and working class. So when white flight panic was in full force HP was obviously much more vulnerable than Hamtramck.

Hamtramck having more residential density than the city core isn't surprising at all. Immigrant neighborhoods with packed in families tend to have more density than bougie downtowns that are mostly made up of large commercial buildings and expensive apartments.

Highland Park's multifamily housing is mostly all gone, today it's dominated by historical grandiose single family homes more than anything else. I guess that housing stock was much more desired by those that moved in or stayed in HP. Hopefully as multifamily mixed used development keeps crawling up Woodward It'll get some of that density back.

[Steely Dan]

hamtramck and highland park are such interesting anomalies.

i mean, how many other major US cities have almost entirely pre-war built-out independent municipalities 100% enclaved within them?

chicago has the enclaved burbs of Norridge and Harwood Heights fully inside of city limits on the far northwest side of the city, but they are way further out and >90% post-war in terms of build-out, so not at all the same thing as hamtramck and HP.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

hamtramck and highland park are such interesting anomalies.

i mean, how many other major US cities have almost entirely pre-war built-out independent municipalities 100% enclaved within them?

chicago has the enclaved burbs of Norridge and Harwood Heights fully inside of city limits on the far northwest side of the city, but they are way further out and >90% post-war in terms of build-out, so not at all the same thing as hamtramck and HP.

Perhaps West Hollywood / Beverly Hills (although apparently West Hollywood was unincorporated until relatively recently?).

Also Mt. Oliver in Pittsburgh.

Columbus has a few enclaves but I have no idea when they're from (maybe they were annexed around recently...).

[Steely Dan]

^ cool, thanks.

pittsburgh's mount oliver looks like it might be the closest of those to a hamtramck/highland park type of situation, though it is absolutely tiny at only 1/3 of a square mile. talk about a weird little tiny leftover.

[ChiSoxRox]

It's not fully enclaved, but Lakewood, Ohio comes to mind. Two sides are Cleveland and the third side is Lake Erie. Peak population was 1930, and today it is significantly denser than Cleveland proper. Lakewood also contains the densest census tracts in the Cleveland metro, analogous to Hamtramck.

[Crawford]

Lakewood feels more like a streetcar suburb, though.

I'd say Dearborn would be the Lakewood of Detroit. Or perhaps Grosse Point Park. If someone were moving from Lakewood to Metro Detroit and wanted a cultural equivalent, I'd suggest Grosse Pointe Park, which is older than the other Pointes and has working class areas, and reads more like an extension of Detroit. Dearborn looks more like Lakewood, though, and the commercial corridors are almost twins, even though it's demographically totally different.

Hamtramck and Highland Park are really inner-city Detroit, fully built out by the 1920's.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Lakewood feels more like a streetcar suburb, though.

I'd say Dearborn would be the Lakewood of Detroit. Or perhaps Grosse Point Park. If someone were moving from Lakewood to Metro Detroit and wanted a cultural equivalent, I'd suggest Grosse Pointe Park, which is older than the other Pointes and has working class areas, and reads more like an extension of Detroit. Dearborn looks more like Lakewood, though, and the commercial corridors are almost twins, even though it's demographically totally different.

Hamtramck and Highland Park are really inner-city Detroit, fully built out by the 1920's.

I've never been to Lakewood, but the street view does remind me of a slightly grittier GPP.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by The North One

Highland Park historically was completely white and very well off. Hamtramck was always heavily immigrant and working class. So when white flight panic was in full force HP was obviously much more vulnerable than Hamtramck.

Hamtramck having more residential density than the city core isn't surprising at all. Immigrant neighborhoods with packed in families tend to have more density than bougie downtowns that are mostly made up of large commercial buildings and expensive apartments.

Highland Park's multifamily housing is mostly all gone, today it's dominated by historical grandiose single family homes more than anything else. I guess that housing stock was much more desired by those that moved in or stayed in HP. Hopefully as multifamily mixed used development keeps crawling up Woodward It'll get some of that density back.

I'd love to see this, it just seems like a hard sell at this point. Highland Park would do well in actively promote itself as a place for new immigrants through visa and grant programs for small business startups.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ cool, thanks.

pittsburgh's mount oliver looks like it might be the closest of those to a hamtramck/highland park type of situation, though it is absolutely tiny at only 1/3 of a square mile. talk about a weird little tiny leftover.

It's not as weird as it looks. Pittsburgh's last big annexation push was in the 1920s and early 1930s, when it scooped up a lot of formerly independent municipalities (typically termed "boroughs" in PA) to the south of the city. Mt. Oliver was the only one that held out, which made it into an enclave.

Historically, it was a pretty solidly middle-class area, which is why it could buck annexation. However, it went downscale and working-class white over time. Like a lot of the adjoining areas of Pittsburgh, things got worse when nearby housing projects were closed/downsized in the 1990s, and it has had a bad opiate issue (based in the white community, not the black newcomers) over the last two decades). It's now about evenly split between white and black, with a large (10%+) Latino community by Pittsburgh standards.

Mt. Oliver has a nice, mostly intact business district, so I'm hopeful it turns around instead of becoming a full-on ghetto. It's only a short distance away from much more revitalized Allentown.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I'd love to see this, it just seems like a hard sell at this point. Highland Park would do well in actively promote itself as a place for new immigrants through visa and grant programs for small business startups.

My understanding is Highland Park is one of those cities that's so poor they have a hard time paying for a police force and keeping on streetlights. I think any sort of outreach is probably beyond them.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I'd love to see this, it just seems like a hard sell at this point. Highland Park would do well in actively promote itself as a place for new immigrants through visa and grant programs for small business startups.

Without something like the extension of the QLine, it's hard to see how infill gets all the way to Highland Park within the next couple of decades. The population of Detroit's core isn't growing fast enough, and there's still so much of Detroit proper south of HP that is a better candidate for infill. IMO, you'd need 10s or 100s of thousands of people moving into Detroit's core this decade to naturally move that needle for HP anytime soon.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

hamtramck and highland park are such interesting anomalies.

i mean, how many other major US cities have almost entirely pre-war built-out independent municipalities 100% enclaved within them?

chicago has the enclaved burbs of Norridge and Harwood Heights fully inside of city limits on the far northwest side of the city, but they are way further out and >90% post-war in terms of build-out, so not at all the same thing as hamtramck and HP.

Montreal is like that. (Not “American” but close.)

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by lio45

Montreal is like that. (Not “American” but close.)

yep, Montreal-Ouest, Westmount, Ville de Mont Royal, Montreal-Est, Hampstead, and Cote St. Luc are completely surrounded by Montreal (or very nearly so).